15
10, 2014
The pros get paid, plain and simple
Once you establish the worth of a product—whether it’s a frozen pizza or national news—it’s awfully difficult to convince people they should have been paying along.
30
04, 2014
The problem with invincible protagonists
I must have killed hundreds of people over the years. Since I’m a writer of sword-and-sorcery fantasy, death come with the territory.
21
03, 2014
Dissecting the difficulties of writing a sequel
A writer’s mind can be a dangerous thing. Perhaps the most notorious forms of self-sabotage are writer’s block and a related syndrome: the sophomore slump.
22
08, 2013
Building a better book title
Titles represent anywhere from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands of words. They have to be worthy of all that hard work you put into your short story, novella or novel. And they must be marketable.
5
06, 2013
What’s in a (brand) name?
When one first decides to become a novelist, many important questions come to mind: What kind of stories should I write? Should I use my real name or invent something better? Can I pull off the pipe and beard look?
22
05, 2013
Writing Poll: real name vs. pen name
For anyone writing fiction: under what name have you/will you publish your work?
9
01, 2013
What would J.R.R. Tolkien do?
While watching the new Hobbit movie, I couldn’t help but wonder what the grandfather of the fantasy genre would think of the adaptation of his 1937 novel.
4
10, 2012
The tricky trek toward those two little words
In my experience, writing the end of a novel has to be the hardest part.
29
05, 2012
When it comes to writing, how much planning is too much?
If the first draft allows the writer to indulge in a carefree orgy of imagination, a Wild West of whimsy, and a devil-may-care series of experiments, then the editing process demands the writer to abstain, rein it in, and exorcise a host of demons.
1
05, 2012
In defense of the dabbler…or…why getting published might not be all it’s cracked up to be
In an earlier post, I defined a dabbler as someone who has yet to write one million words while simultaneously implying that the one million words benchmark might be less of a milestone than a state of mind.